


Five Things The Queen Never Got To Do With Her Daughter, And One Thing She Did

by ardentintoxication



Category: Tangled (2010)
Genre: Angst, Community: disney_kink, Family, Fluff, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-18
Updated: 2011-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentintoxication/pseuds/ardentintoxication
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Queen kept a list of things she planned to do with Rapunzel if she ever got her back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things The Queen Never Got To Do With Her Daughter, And One Thing She Did

_1\. Watch her first steps._  
  
"These hurt!"  
  
Rapunzel stared at her feet. These...  _shoes_  were horrible. They rubbed her heels and pinched her toes and made her ankles wobble and she couldn't feel the grass anymore.  
  
The Queen put a hand on her shoulder. "You'll break them in, don't worry. Now, put your hand on my shoulder. Good. Now, walk with me."  
  
Rapunzel took a few hesitant steps.  
  
"Try to glide."  
  
Rapunzel attempted to glide. Rapunzel failed to glide, and ended up on the floor in a heap.  
  
The Queen helped her back up. "Your back isn't straight enough. You need poise."  
  
Rapunzel did not have poise.  
  
The Queen sighed, then pulled over a mirror. "Look," she said, pointing at the reflection. "Do you know what I see?"  
  
 _I see a strong, confident, beautiful young lady. Oh, look, you're here, too!_  
  
"No," said Rapunzel, quietly.  
  
"I see a princess. A princess must have confidence to stand before a crowd, or to speak with foreign rulers. So, straighten your back," her hands moved Rapunzel to the correct position, "raise your head," Rapunzel looked, "and tell yourself that nothing, not even shoes, can stand in your way."  
  
Rapunzel took a few smooth steps. Then a few more. She turned to smile at her mother, and promptly tripped over a footstool.  
  
Well, they had the rest of the day to work on it.  
  
 _2\. Buy her clothes._  
  
"Dear, the servants- oh, no."  
  
"What?" Rapunzel was dancing today.  
  
"What did you do to the bedspread?" It was a rather useless question. It was obvious. The red silk appeared to have been cannibalized by rampaging boars, and then flung about the room by a hurricane. Some scraps of it were in Rapunzel's hair, and she had seven or eight thimbles on her fingers.  
  
"I made a bathrobe! Isn't it beautiful?"  
  
How to explain this? "Rapunzel, dear, you can't just cut up your bedspread to make clothes."  
  
Rapunzel was unfazed.  
  
"But look! I have a bathrobe now! I didn't know there were clothes you wore just to get in and out of the bath! And it has all this lovely embroidery-"  
  
"Well, yes, because that was very expensive brocade. It was a very lovely bedspread."  
  
"Well, now it's a very lovely bathrobe."  
  
Well, they were the king and queen, after all. They could afford a new bedspread.  
  
Though maybe not one that had been in the family for fourteen generations.  
  
 _3\. Teach her how to read._  
  
"Oh,  _Mom!_ " said Rapunzel. "I've never seen so many books before! Well, I did when I was in the library with Eugene, but we didn't stay there long because the guards were coming and I wanted another dance, and I was so excited because Mother - sorry, Gothel - only had three books and I read them all already-"  
  
The Queen flinched. She did not want to hear about that woman.  
  
"-but now I have a lot of books and I can read them  _all_  and I won't have to leave ever - will I, Mom?" Rapunzel turned, looking worried.  
  
The Queen smiled. "You can stay as long as you like."

_4\. Celebrate all her birthdays._  
  
Rapunzel had never had candles in her birthday cake.  
  
She stared at the small flames, one for each year of her life.  
  
"But today isn't my birthday," she said, frowning. "My birthday was..." she trailed off, and her breath hitched a bit. "My birthday was six months ago."  
  
"Dear," said the Queen, touching her shoulder, "We released the lanterns on the anniversary of your disappearance, not your birthday. I suppose that wom-  _Gothel_  celebrated that instead."  
  
"Oh." Rapunzel looked at the candle flames again. She looked for what seemed like hours, and finally she said, "Gothel never let me have candles on my birthday cake. She said my hair would catch on fire and the magic would go away." She started to sniffle. "I don't even know when my birthday is, and you got me a cake and it's  _beautiful_ , but I can't, I can't," and she threw her arms around her mother and sobbed into her neatly starched chest.  
  
The Queen went to stroke her hair, and stopped. She rubbed Rapunzel's back instead, and held her as she cried.  
  
The cake could wait.  
  
 _5\. Arrange a suitable marriage for her._  
  
"Who is visiting again?"  
  
"Prince Torvald of Chromasia, dear."  
  
"Why can't Eugene come with me?"  
  
The Queen didn't know how to answer that. She loved her daughter and wanted her to be happy, but really, this was too much. At one point Rapnzel would understand that sometimes you have to give up things, and sometimes that's love. Of course the Queen loved the King, but she certainly didn't when  _she_  was eighteen.  _Love takes time_ , her mother used to say, and three days is certainly not long enough to fall in love.  
  
She looked at her daughter's face. She'd seen that look before, on her sister Cordelia and on her brother Alvis. She'd seen it in herself.  
  
Rapunzel was definitely in love.  
  
The Queen sighed and walked out the door. She had apologies to make and excuses to fabricate.  
  
 _1\. Attend her wedding._  
  
The Queen was right. Maybe not in letting about fourteen wanted felons in as groomsmen, or allowing a small, grubby orphan to be the ring-bearer, but definitely in letting Rapunzel marry Eugene. In that moment, she didn't care if the Chromasians would get snippy at diplomatic debates from now on, or if the courtiers would talk behind their hands for several months.  
  
Besides, she was Queen, wasn't she? Shouldn't she of all people be allowed to bend the rules?  
  
The Queen smiled.


End file.
